The search for great harmony: A study of Tang Xianzu's dramatic art

This dissertation is a critical study of the dramatic art of Tang Xianzu (1550-1616), the widely acclaimed dramatist of the late Ming. Different from previous studies by critics and scholars on him, it treats the corpus of Tang Xianzu's drama as his spiritual and artistic search for "he" (unified harmony), a most significant ideal in both traditional Chinese moral philosophy and classical Chinese aesthetics.This principle of "he" is the key to Tang Xianzu's dramaturgy. Responsive to his cultural situation, influenced by his family, teachers, and friends, Tang cultivated a complex vision of reality in which Confucian thought, Buddhist and Taoist doctrines all played formative roles. His syncretism could well account for his search for "he" in the meaning of his dramatic writings as a whole. In his representation of the theme, ging (human emotions), for example, not only did Tang delineate different kinds of human emotions, he also carefully examined ging from opposite yet complementary philosophical perspectives in different plays. He celebrated it as life-giving force in The Purple Hairpin and The Peony Pavilion but questioned its value in human existence in The Nanke Dream and The Handan Dream.The "he" principle also underlies important formal aspects of Tang's drama: the disposition of characters, the use of language, and the inclusion of dreams. In every play, Tang presented a complex character design with parallelism, contrast, and commentary. With regard to his use of language, he attempted to merge different literary texts and styles, characters' mutually complementary voices, and multiple meanings of ambiguous lyrics into a unified harmony. By employing the dream device, Tang combined the two patterns of dramatic form, the linear and the contextual, in his Nanke and Handan.The meaning of "he" is three-fold: In the narrowest sense, it means harmonious unity of one or more pairs of opposites. In a broader sense, it signifies synthesis of various heterogeneous elements. In the broadest sense, "he " is unity formed by both opposites and elements of different nature.